While Dyer may feel he is swimming in custard, his descriptions of his days afloat in foreign landscapes are a compression...
In a neat bit of legerdemain, a British literary critic and novelist concocts an existential memoir from a fabric of sideways glances and moments out of time.
There are times, many times, when Dyer (Paris Trance, 1999, etc.) approaches “a kind of parable, one without any lesson or moral, a parable from which it would be impossible to learn anything or draw any conclusions,” when you have to hold it obliquely and read it askance, finding its importance in the marginalia, all that glitters on the verge. And you have to be quick about it, because he keeps on the move: Detroit to Cambodia, New Orleans to Paris, Amsterdam, and Rome. He is adrift, distracted, agitated: “As soon as I had sat down, I would think, I'll stand up, and then, as soon as I had stood up, I would want to sit down.” In counterpoint to Frank O’Hara, he would work along the lines of “ ‘I did not do this and I did not do that,’ but predictably, I did not do this.” He just wanted to get in the car and drive, but “the only place I really wanted to go was Rome, and I was there already.” But for all the who’s-on-first rigmarole, the plaints of loss and decline, grousing about “the roller-coaster emotions of travel, its surges of exaltation, its troughs of despondency,” Dyer is remarkably active and observant, his attentiveness aided more than once by helpings of mushrooms or marijuana. For all his professed loneliness, he spends plenty of time with women and friends, in amusement and openness, whether it be trying to calm a date who gets royally spooked by the power of his “skunk,” or the clarity enjoyed in Amsterdam when he “unblocked all sorts of café chakras and was experiencing a sense of absolute calm”—or watching Burning Man, engulfed in flames, buckle at the knee, as if “to step free of the fire that defined and claimed him.”
While Dyer may feel he is swimming in custard, his descriptions of his days afloat in foreign landscapes are a compression of jolts that will stir his audience, elementally and disturbingly.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-42214-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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